Modern aircraft, and particularly larger commercial aircraft, are highly sophisticated vehicles incorporating numerous electrical systems for ensuring vehicle control and safety. During the assembly and commissioning of a new aircraft, it is necessary to ensure that the multitude of electrical circuits in the various control and safety systems of the aircraft are connected and operating correctly.
The testing and evaluation of the various control and safety systems during the assembly of an aircraft conventionally involve conducting a particular test procedure at a number of different test points. In other words, essentially the same procedure must be repeatedly carried out time and again at each of the series of test points. This may, for example, involve the testing of a particular avionic unit at multiple connection or input points to determine whether or not a defined voltage exists at each input. A significant drawback of such a testing regime is that the execution of the tests is extremely time intensive, and therefore cost intensive, because it involves manually checking each of the various test points one after the other. This requires that test equipment be positioned at different locations and that a new contact or connection be established at each of the different test points. Furthermore, with a large number of separate test points, the risk that one or more test point may be overlooked also becomes significant in such a conventional testing regime.
Thus, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for testing aircraft control and safety systems which are simpler to implement and are optimized from a time and cost perspective. It is a further object of the invention to provide such a method and apparatus that may reduce the risk of a test point being overlooked or missed.